For the individual market, this is actually slightly lower than the national average (23.4%), and New Hampshire will still end up with the 2nd-lowest avg. premiums in the country (Idaho should be slightly lower next year), but 22.4% is still pretty steep, and the state insurance dept. isn't happy about it:
New Hampshire Insurance Department Urges Health Carriers to Submit Revised 2026 Premium Rates Reflecting Current Economic Conditions
New Hampshire has around ~70,000 residents enrolled in ACA exchange plans, 71% of whom are currently subsidized. I estimate they also have another ~14,000 unsubsidized off-exchange enrollees.
(Unfortunately, Anthem has redacted their current enrollment total; see below)
This is a rate filing for the Individual market ACA-compliant plans offered by Anthem Health Plans of New Hampshire, Inc., also referred to as Anthem. The policy forms associated with these plans are listed below. The proposed rates in this filing are for a new HMO product that will be effective for the 2026 plan year beginning January 1, 2026, and apply exclusively to off-exchange plans.
With the pending dire threat to several of these programs (primarily Medicaid & the ACA) from the House Republican Budget Proposal which recently passed, I'm going a step further and am generating pie charts which visualize just how much of every Congressional District's total population is at risk of losing healthcare coverage.
USE THE DROP-DOWN MENU ABOVE TO FIND YOUR STATE & DISTRICT.
The good news about New Hampshire's health insurance market is that they're the only state without its own ACA exchange which produces publicly-accessible monthly reports on individual on-exchange market enrollment. The bad news is that they don't seem to publish the actual rate filings in an easy-to-read format, which means I'm left with the federal rate review website, which sometimes posts average rate requests which don't match up with the actual filings...but it's gonna have to do here.
With these two data sources in hand, New Hampshire's individual market carriers are asking for a weighted average increase of 4.8%. It's important to note that Anthem Health Plans and Matthew Thornton Health Plan are listed as separate carriers on the federal Rate Review website (with separate average rate requests), but on the state's monthly report, they're merged into a single listing.
With no way of knowing what the actual enrollment breakout is between these two, I'm assuming a 50/50 split.
As a result of today’s announcement, up to an additional 18,000 people in Missouri will be eligible for Medicaid for a full year after pregnancy. Medicaid covers 41% of all births in the nation and more than half of all children in the country. With the approval of Missouri’s plan, an estimated 641,000 Americans across 40 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands now have access to extended postpartum coverage. If all states adopted this option, as many as 720,000 people across the United States would be guaranteed Medicaid and CHIP coverage for 12 months after pregnancy.
New Hampshire Insurance Department Announces the Launch of 2024 Open Enrollment Period for Affordable Care Act Individual Marketplace and Releases 2024 Premium Rates
CONCORD, NH (October 31, 2023) – Today, the New Hampshire Insurance Department (NHID) kicked off the Open Enrollment Period for Granite Staters who are seeking individual health coverage on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Individual Marketplace. The Open Enrollment Period runs from Tuesday, November 1, 2023, through Sunday, January 15, 2024.
“This is a significant opportunity for Granite Staters who do not have health insurance through their employer, Medicare, or Medicaid to enroll in the Individual Marketplace,” said New Hampshire Insurance Commissioner DJ Bettencourt. “For the fourth consecutive year, the 1332 Waiver has resulted in premiums for the individual market being the lowest in New England, ensuring more individuals have access to the healthcare they need.”
The good news about New Hampshire's health insurance market is that they're the only state without its own ACA exchange which produces publicly-accessible monthly reports on individual on-exchange market enrollment. The bad news is that they don't seem to publish the actual rate filings in an easy-to-read format, which means I'm left with the federal rate review website, which sometimes posts average rate requests which don't match up with the actual filings...but it's gonna have to do here.
With these two data sources in hand, New Hampshire's individual market carriers are asking for a weighted average increase of 3.1%. It's important to note that Anthem Health Plans and Matthew Thornton Health Plan are listed as separate carriers on the federal Rate Review website (with separate average rate requests), but on the state's monthly report, they're merged into a single listing.
The good news about New Hampshire's health insurance market is that they're the only state without its own ACA exchange which produces publicly-accessible monthly reports on individual on-exchange market enrollment. The bad news is that they don't seem to publish the actual rate filings in an easy-to-read format, which means I'm left with the federal rate review website. The problem with that is the rate filings are mostly heavily redacted, making it impossible to get the total enrollment data.
As I noted last night, thanks to the federal Rate Review website finally being updated to include the final, approved 2022 rates for both the individual and small group markets in all 50 states (+DC), I've been able to fill in the missing data for my annual ACA Rate Change Project.
As I note there, the overall weighted average looks like it'll be roughly +3.5% nationally.
Normally I write up a separate entry for both the preliminary and approved rate changes in each individual state, but it seems like overkill to create 14 separate entries at once. Besides, in many of these states there's been few if any changes between the preliminary and approved rate changes.
